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Shakedown, Ramsey Unit, Texas

Photo: Elizabeth Mann

Shakedown, Ramsey Unit, Texas

1967-69

Danny Lyon

American, born 1942

Throughout 1967, Danny Lyon photographed daily life at six texas prisons. These images appeared in his 1969 book, "Conversations with the Dead", along with an inmate's letters, and commentary.

Lyon took this photograph at the Ramsey prison, where inmates worked on a sixteen thousand-acre farm. He capture the humiliating and invasive nature of the strip search that prisoners endured when they returned from the fields. Lyon further dramatizes the scene by using a sharp angle, and by emphasizing the contrast between the man's body and the sky. Lyon has said of these photographs: "I tried with whatever power I had to make a picture of imprisonment as distressing as I knew it to be in reality."




Gelatin Silver Print
8 11/16 x 13 in. (22.1 x 33 cm)
Gift of Steven and Judith Clifford in honor of the museum's 50th year
83.288.17
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
location
Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The Art of Protest, Apr. 27, 2000 - Jan. 21, 2001.

Seattle, Washington, Danny Lyon: Dissenter in His Own Country, Nov. 13, 2019 - June 28, 2020.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

Learn more about Equity at SAM